List Obsessives

Do you as a writer spend so much time "preparing to write" that you never actually do any writing? It's a phenomenon I've noticed a lot, especially on sites like Reddit, but that obsessive characteristic pops up on places like Instagram, too.

In my experience, when there's something I don't want to do, I'll invent all kinds of preliminary steps, like making a list or suddenly discovering there's a household task that really needs to be done before I can even think about doing that thing. I'm a master avoider. 

I've run across people who keep a running tally of their daily word count; I've heard of those who create detailed character profiles. So many things, including the writer's water intake, are charted. I used to subscribe to a YouTuber's newsletter, and she offered an author checklist, an Excel sheet that included every detail of writing and publishing, with checkoff spaces for each completed step, such as book cover creation, editing, securing an ISBN, sending ARC's; it went on and on.  

Excuse me, but you don't know that your book will need a cover without referring to a spreadsheet? And as for character sheets, their necessity escapes me. I don't know what my latest MC's hobbies are; I'm pretty sure she doesn't have any. Know why? Because they don't matter to the story! I never even decided that she had blonde hair until I was about halfway through.

I do get it; if you're a first-time publisher, there's a bunch of things to do or learn how to do. But I wonder if all this unnecessary prep is an avoidance maneuver.  

If keeping track of your daily output is a motivator, then sure, do it. Keep in mind, though, that it's not the number of words that count, but the words themselves. If someone has a goal of 5,000 words per day (madness, considering my writing method), do they stop at word 5,000? "Oh, look! I hit 5,000 words with 'if'!" 

As for the other things, if you spend an inordinate amount of time creating lists and spreadsheets before you've written a single word, do you really, honestly want to write at all? I saw a Reddit post from someone who stated that he spent six months on word building. Okay... 

No, I don't keep spreadsheets, except to track the amount I've spent on promos (!) and the number of books I managed to sell with each site. It's not something I need to do, but at least my novel was already written, edited, and published before I pulled up Excel.

Dorothy Parker once said, "I hate writing, but I like having written." I don't hate writing, but I hate certain aspects of it ~ the conundrums that I don't know how to solve satisfactorily, the false starts that I need to delete. But I think some folks twist that saying into "I like the idea of having written." When it's all a wondrous dream, all of us are world-famous authors.

If only it was that easy.